Since 2000 and until CM 11, Caixa Mágica had developed the installer / configurator (lucas/licas/xLucas/xLicas) from scratch and shared the base with SuSE.

The Caixa Mágica versions 12, 14 and 15 shared the Mandriva framework (Installer and Configurator and core RPMs). It was not entirely the same code since we were committed to core technologies that were not in Mandriva roadmap like Apt,.... Read the LetterToTheCommunity about the moving to Mandriva (portuguese).

From Caixa Mágica 16 onwards we decided to move to a Debian core distribution, using mainly Ubuntu as the package base. You can read the announcement ​here

Although there are several payed developers in the development process, Caixa Mágica has always been open to contributions.